The 2017 Lürzer's Archive Student of the Year Winners: Meri Giorgobiani and Ifeanyi Arthur Mazi

Congratulations are in order to the winners of this year's Lürzer's Archive Student of the Year Award: Meri Giorgobiani and Ifeanyi Arthur Mazi for their "Reborn" ad, created at Miami Ad School, Hamburg, under the tutelage of Niklas Frings-Rupp. Meri comes from Georgia and after her graduation late year went back to her home country while Arthur remained in Germany and currently lives and works in the Northern German city of Kiel. The student ad they won with is this:

The jury – consisting of Jessica Mantovani, art assistant at Ogilvy Brasil in Sao Paulo and Lürzer's Archive, Student of the Year 2016, Ju Paracencio, Regional Creative Director at Memac Ogilvy & Mather, Dubai, Asif Amin Tibet Baqual, Founder and Chief Creative Officer at BlackSheep.Works, Srinagar, Kashmir, Marc Hasan Bieri, Senior Copywriter at BBDO, Berlin, and Michael Weinzettl, editor-in-chief of Lürzer's Archive – decided 3:2 that the massage parlour ad should be the winner. Runners-up were the at&t ad by Kotob Zuheir and Joao Magalhaes of Miami Ad School, Miami (Instructor: Jorge Murillo), which was Marc Hasan's favourite and Ju's number one choice, a very topical ad with the headline: "An accidental racist is still a racist. Think before you tweet" by Eric Percoco from The Creative Circus, Atlanta (Instructor: Mitch Bennett).

Asif Amin of BlackSheep.Works in Kashmir sent a beautifully detailed explanation for his decision to vote for Meri and Artur's "Reborn" which I would like to quote in full: "The idea is simple yet brilliantly executed. What better treatment can one dead tired person get than a rejuvenating massage that will make him/her feel alive and kicking. The person getting the massage looking through the breathing hole of the masseuse’s bed appears as if being delivered normally in a labour room. The translation of the insight into a stunning visual idea like this made me feel: "Damn, I should have come up with this!"

Our heartiest congratulations to Meri and Arthur for this wonderful idea. You guys deserve to win this and Niklas deserves a round of drinks at his favourite watering hole!"